


That Which Resonates

by farrafella



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 08:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/877930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farrafella/pseuds/farrafella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel was his name, but it was never going to be his destiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Which Resonates

Daniel had never sat well on his tongue. He'd meet new people and he'd try to tell them his name, Daniel Plummer, but something would make the words come out wrong. He tongue resisted forming the necessary shapes needed to say the words. His voice would catch on the consonants and pause too long on the vowels. There was just something inherently wrong about the five syllables he'd said and heard too many times in his life. The wrongness was so unnerving it strangled him and left him tongue tied each time he told people his name. People had come to accept it as social anxiety, and he let them believe that because it was a lot easier than explaining something he couldn't explain to himself. 

When he was younger he thought maybe he was adopted and his parents had changed his name when adopting him, but a birth certificate quickly proved that doubt wrong. He used to tell them his name wasn't truly his all the time when he was younger, but he had learnt to stop doing so once saying so would induce a shared look of worry between his parents. They'd always sit him down and tell him the same thing before he stopped telling them.

"Names are important, Daniel. They define who we are, what we are, what we will be. Names are our identity. We chose Daniel for you so that makes it a very important name, you are Daniel Plummer and you only think it sounds wrong. Daniel Plummer is your own special and magical destiny."

This was normally followed by a dismissal and soon Daniel learnt that voicing his worry was a bad idea, so he kept it to himself. Maybe that's why he ended up keeping all his problems to himself as he grew up. That's probably what a psychiatrist would say, but somehow that too seemed wrong to Daniel. He just knew that his worries were so far from normal and comprehensible that it would be better to not mention them. Instead he locked them up inside his heart, leaving himself feeling permanently disjointed right down to his core. How could he tell anyone that he didn't feel like he belonged, not in that he didn't have lots of friends (he did) and a loving environment, but that even though he had all all those things they just weren't right. They too were wrong. They weren't real, at least they didn't seem so. There was something missing; something important but he had no idea what. His whole life existed on a plane of imperceivable wrongness that settled in his stomach uncomfortably and lurked disconcertingly in the periphery of his thoughts, and he could never escape that feeling. This acceptance of everything being wrong was the only comfort he had, because it was the only  constant in his life he felt was truly right.

For that reason when asked for his name his heart would sink slightly more as he slowly buried himself into the destiny of Daniel Plummer; a destiny that wasn't his. 

One day he had been out on a Saturday night with his friends Gwen and Lance after a week of exams at Manchester University. He was so drunk he didn't even know what club he was in anymore. The more he drank the more the misaligned crevasse in his chest shifted like a fault line moments before an earthquake. The feeling he'd grown accustomed to over twenty years slowly intensified as he and his friends did numerous vodka shots at the bar. The intensity threw him off him as normally Lance and Gwen were able to neutralise the sensation that plagued him. They were the only ones he'd ever found who had been able to do so; his two pieces of right in a universe of wrong.

That night had been different. The air was pulsing with sex, secrets and desire that stabbed maliciously at Daniel's growing headache. Gwen was clutching his clammy hand in her own, leading him towards the dance floor when her grip slipped and he was left stranded in the ocean of writhing bodies. He had never felt so alone as he did in that one moment. Nothing was wrong and nothing was right; everything was merely nothing.

Then he felt that iron grip clasp his forearm and three words rang through the air clear as day, despite the overwhelming background noise. Something shifted inside him and he knew right there, before he even turned around, that he had found that other half of himself that had always eluded his desperate grasp.

"Are you alright?"

The words hadn't sounded at all concerned like they suggested, more annoyed that some probably high twat had suddenly swayed dangerously into their path. Something about the tone felt like a forgotten home and Daniel couldn't help but smile to himself before turning and facing his destiny. 

The mans face was drenched in visible disdain and his friends stood behind him like loyal knights waiting to draw their swords and cut down any drugged up swine who blocked their master's path. The look instantly bled from his features and was replaced with something sweet and innocent, completely incongruous to the setting, but which resonated with some strand of life deep inside Daniel.

"What's your name?" The unknown boy's words were urgent just like Daniel's own need to know the same of the other boy.

"My name is Merlin." 

Destiny's name was Mike, but he preferred Arthur. 


End file.
